This may seem like an odd thing to say, that I have NO ability to daydream. If you know me, you know that I’m a very creative person. I’m also hard-working, conscientious, thoughtful, caring, and smart. But what does ANY of that have to do with my inability to daydream?

Let me explain.

Daydreams, according to Webster’s Dictionary, are “a pleasant, dreamy series of thoughts.” This implies that those things you daydream about are fantasizes, or having no real substance.

I’m pretty sure that my secret goal all throughout my life has been to be a Hobbit. Eat, drink, read, write, work in your garden, and really just live a quiet life. For me, though, I’m thinking about being a Hobbit more like Bilbo. He goes out, has great adventures, then comes back super rich and uses all of his new wealth to spoil his friends and family members and live a mostly quiet life. He still travels out to see the Elves every now and again and other of his companions come to visit him, but overall, his life is rather plain.

When I first realized that this was my true secret goal in life, I immediately started thinking about ways where I could do as little as possible for as long as possible. I have no desire to live in a cardboard box, you see. At the time, I was absolutely buried in student debt and didn’t have very many real career opportunities. I did a bunch of research and found a good, but very demanding, job that would take care of me, let me travel the world a bit, and allow me full financial security. There are a lot of draw-backs to this plan, but it is a long-term plan to get me to my goal in life.

My daydream.

As I progressed in my career, I realized that I desperately wanted to take up writing again. So I applied, and was quickly accepted, to Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. There really wasn’t a long delay between my recognizing something I wanted in my life and then me working towards a way to make that goal achievable.

I have also decided that I want to teach when I am done with my current occupation. I think doing a year teaching English as a second language in a foreign country sounds awesome. So I am upgrading my MA to an MFA so that I am qualified to teach at the university or college level and once I get a break there, I will get my Teaching English as a Second Language certification. After I do that for a bit, then I’ll come back and start teaching at a small community college, hopefully in Montana.

So when I say that I do not daydream, I’m really saying that I am not very good at just sitting around, waiting for someone else to make my life what I want it to be. I am a hard-worker, which means I am willing to put forth any effort necessary to get me to my goals.

There are so many people out there who don’t admit to themselves, let alone anyone else, what they really want in life. And because they don’t know what they want, they don’t know how to work towards getting it. Life is full of uncontrollable stressors – school, work, family, rent, medical stuff – that impact our abilities to actually accomplish our goals, but I sometimes wish there was a way for me to convince people that it’s okay to want to be what you really want to be. And if that’s what you really want, or who you really are, you should find a way to work towards what you want.

I’m at a cross-roads. Very, very soon, I will have to decide whether to continue on my current path and continue working in a job that I feel is starting to weigh heavily on my soul, but one that will take care of me for the rest of my life if I can manage to do this for another nine years, or if I want to change my path and risk everything I’ve worked so hard for in order to achieve sooner gratification of what I want now. Both options have so many parts that are equally appealing or frustrating and I might have found a loophole that will let me do both at the same time, but that loop hole is going to require so many things outside my control to line up that I’m not sure if I should even attempt it.

Included in my inability to daydream is also the ability to have very random, very focused, creative ideas that impact those around me. I’m something like a super generous prankster.